1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to methods, systems, and computer program products for accessing multimedia data of a variety of different formats from a variety of multimedia sources.
2. Related Technology
The advent of the computer revolution has had a tremendous impact on the ability to record and edit multimedia content (e.g., video and audio data). For instance, multimedia content can now be recorded in a digital format and stored on a condensed storage medium, thereby decreasing the cost and space previously required to archive desired multimedia content. Examples of condensed storage media that are capable of storing digital multimedia content include, for example, Compact Disks (CDs), Digital Video Disks (DVDs), MP3 disks, computer hard disk drives, floppy disks, smart media cards, and compact flash cards.
One advantage of digitizing multimedia content is that multimedia content can be broadcast and rendered with higher quality in a digital format than in an analog format. The devices and storage media used to capture and render digital multimedia are also typically smaller than the devices and storage media that are required to capture and render the same multimedia in analog formats. Yet another advantage of digitizing multimedia content is that digital data can typically be indexed and accessed more quickly than analog data.
The advantages provided by digitizing multimedia content have increased the demand for digital devices and multimedia applications that are capable of capturing, editing, and rendering multimedia content. Accordingly, the computer industry has worked to develop improved devices and applications to meet the increased demand.
One underlying problem with providing improved applications for multimedia content, however, is that there are many different types of formats, standards, and protocols that are used to encode and transmit digital data. Examples of different formatting standards include, for example, MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group), ASF (Advanced Streaming Format), AVI (Audio Video Interleave), Active Movie, Cinepaq, QuickTime, Indeo, ATVEF (Advanced Television Enhancement Forum) and ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee).
Examples of different protocols and languages include RTSP (Real-Time Streaming Protocol), RTP (Real-Time Protocol), RTCP (Real-Time Control Protocol), UDP (User Datagram Protocol, HTTP (Hypertext Transport Protocol), MMS (Microsoft Media Server), TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), XML (eXtensible Markup Language), and SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language).
There are also many different multimedia sources including, but not limited to, broadcast television stations, cable stations, radio stations, CDs, DVDs, computer hard drives, the Internet, MP3 players, and so forth. Each of these various multimedia sources may present multimedia content in a different manner to the multimedia application that is used to access and process the multimedia content, thereby requiring the multimedia applications to be configured to interpret a variety of different formats, standards and protocols.
Accordingly, the large variety of different multimedia formats, standards, and protocols creates a burden on programmers for creating multimedia applications that are capable of accommodating the various standards, protocols, languages and requirements that can be used to present multimedia content. Individually programming the multimedia applications in this manner, however, is inefficient, particularly when a single computing system is configured with multiple applications that must each be programmed to interpret certain basic information of the multimedia content. For instance, it may be necessary for the applications to each determine the duration of the multimedia content, the formatting of the multimedia content, the types of data present in the multimedia content, and so forth.
Programming each of the different applications to individually determine basic information regarding the multimedia content requires duplicated efforts and undesirably wastes time, costs, and resources that are required to individually program the multimedia applications. Accordingly, there is currently a need in the art for improved methods for enabling multimedia applications to access and process multimedia data without the applications having to individually interpret and determine the characteristics of the multimedia content directly.